Kathy Reiffenstein's Blog on
Creating Confident, Persuasive Speakers

Executive Presentations

February 24, 2010

Teleprompters are a relatively recent addition to the field of oratory. The producer of the I Love Lucy TV show claimed credit in the 1950s for the idea and was awarded a U.S. patent for its invention [see below for update]. Since that time, scores of political figures and business people have used teleprompters to deliver speeches. The tool's convenience is unquestioned; its effectiveness, however, is very dependent on the user's skill.

In the best of all possible scenarios, the speaker reading from the teleprompter panels appears to be looking directly into the camera or directly at the audience and speaking spontaneously. In too many scenarios, though, the best doesn't happen and the speaker never connects with the audience.

Here are some tips which will make you less stilted when using a teleprompter.

1. Read the script through several times without the teleprompter. This enables you to get familiar with the phrasing and cadence, particularly if someone else has written the speech. It also makes it less likely that you'll be thrown off if the teleprompter has a word misspelled or if a line end on the screen creates an unnatural break in a sentence.

2. Speak naturally which is challenging because most people aren't used to reading text out loud. When we read silently to ourselves, our brain intuitively adds the inflections, the pauses and the conversational quality. But when we read out loud, those things don't happen automatically. Be especially conscious to avoid a sing-song quality which makes you sound disengaged. Strive to infuse emotion into your voice and connect with the audience.

3. Know your teleprompter operator and rehearse several times with him/her. Set your own pace; a skilled operator should be able to follow you and adjust the scrolling words to suit your pace, but don't leave this to chance by not rehearsing.

4. Have a few people in the audience while you are rehearsing so they can assess the effectiveness of your eye contact. Your goal, of course, is to look like you're not reading. You also want to avoid the robotic movement of your head from side to side as you shift back and forth between two teleprompter screens, something President Obama has been accused of more than once.

5. Take a hard copy of your speech with you. Teleprompters have been known to malfunction and although Bill Clinton reportedly continued seamlessly for over 15 minutes when his teleprompter failed, you may not be so skilled.

Just like with other types of speech delivery, practice with the teleprompter will indeed make perfect.

And for a read that will have you giggling out loud, Barack Obama's Teleprompter's Blog [because there is no POTUS without TOTUS], claiming to offer "reflections from the hard drive of the machine that enables the voice of the Leader of the Free World."

Update:

A kind reader, Laurie Brown, wrote to say that she had the privilege of interviewing one of the men who invented the teleprompter, Hub Schlafly, and she did not believe he had any connection to Lucille Ball. It does appear that he, with 2 colleagues, founded the TelePrompTer Corporation but I have not been able to find confirmation that he actually invented the device. See here for another source that attributes the teleprompter invention to Jess Oppenheimer, producer of I Love Lucy, and here for a copy of his patent. Anybody have any insight on who really invented the teleprompter?

February 04, 2010

I'm the first one to advise against reading a speech. It usually is tricky to maintain decent eye contact, a struggle to sound authentic, challenging to create any kind of connection with the audience...and just plain boring to listen to.

Yet you may be faced with some of these situations:

Perhaps your comments have been through legal or regulatory approval and need to be delivered precisely as written. Perhaps there are slander concerns. Perhaps you are delivering highly technical content that needs to be exact. Perhaps you give a great many speeches [think president or foreign diplomat] and you simply don't have the time to internalize your message enough to speak from notes.

So, even I am forced to admit that there are a few specific occasions where reading a speech may be necessary. However, reading a speech badly is never necessary.

Walking up to a podium and starting to read prepared text, whether written by you or someone else, without sufficient preparation is a recipe for disaster. Then all the concerns I listed in the first paragraph will certainly become reality.

Take a look at the first few minutes of this video of J.K. Rowling [of Harry Potter fame] delivering the 2008 commencement address at Harvard for an excellent example of how to read a speech well. Notice, above all, how much eye contact she has with the audience.

Embrace the following tips to make your speech reading so skilled that it's almost transparent to your audience.

1. Your content should be structured so that it is super relevant to the audience since you won't likely be comfortable ad-libbing explanations or examples during the presentation. Make sure the points supporting your main message flow logically.

2. Use large type and lots of white space. Number your pages. Have your text on only the top half of the sheets of paper as this will avoid the necessity of bending your chin to your chest as you read the bottom of the page. If you can prop your pages of text up so that your face is more level with the audience, so much the better.

3. Do not speak when you are looking down at your speech on the podium. Speak to the audience only when your eyes are off the text.

5. Since you're pretty much glued to the podium because that's where your text is, you can't move around. So be very conscious of your animation. Use large gestures and infuse your voice with energy.

6. Work on having a very conversational tone. The written word is frequently not conversational, so massage those words, particularly if someone else wrote them, until they sound like something you would say if you were sitting across a table from your listeners.

7. I've saved the most important for last...read the speech out loud a number of times [at least 4-5] to get the phrasing and pacing right. This also helps you implant the phrases and cadence in your brain so that, during the presentation, you can grab a phrase from the prepared text, make eye contact with the audience, and then deliver the phrase.

For more excellent tips on how to sound natural when you read a speech, please check out Heather Stubbs' blog post at Tips on Talking.

What experiences have you had, as either presenter or audience member, with reading a speech?

January 13, 2010

Good presentation skills are good presentation skills, no matter what position or title you hold...right? Well, yes...and no.

While it's certainly true that there are many foundational best practices for effective presentations that are applicable for everyone, once you reach an executive level in your organization, there are a few necessary tweaks to adopt.

EXECUTIVE TWEAKS

1. As an executive, you need to be even more aware of how you come across and how people perceive you because you have more visibility and power both within and outside your organization. What you say and how you say it gets quoted, taken literally, interpreted and acted upon.

Assess how you show up by videotaping your presentations and analyzing tone of voice, demeanor, eye contact, body language and authenticity. Hire a communications consultant to help with this for a professional, objective viewpoint.

2. Although you may have detailed knowledge of how things work in your particular field, the executive presenter should focus more on the what versus the how. According to Scott Eblin, executive coach, speaker and author of The Next Level: What Insiders Know About Executive Success, "A common mistake new executives make is to focus too much on how they came to their conclusions. To do this is to risk getting labeled as someone who, when asked for the time, explains how to build a watch."

Your audience is looking to you to provide leadership, synthesize concepts and not get mired in the weeds of detail. Eblin says, "Focus much more on your recommendations and their implications than on the mechanics of how you arrived at them."

3. Making a vision and big picture goals meaningful to employees is a key objective of many executive presentations. Storytelling is an excellent tool for accomplishing this. Stories provide context, engage an audience, make the message memorable and give the executive a more conversational, down-to-earth tone. Here is a great example of executive effectiveness, using story, from communications consultant, Angela DeFinis.

Telling a story well is not an intuitive skill for most people. Craft your story(ies) well in advance of your presentation so you can practice your delivery, tone, pauses, inflection and facial expressions. Rehearse on videotape in front of colleagues/advisors who can give you critical, honest feedback.

4. Many executives give a substantial enough number of speeches and presentations that it may not be feasible to rehearse and internalize each of them to the point where they can be delivered with only minimum notes. Reading a speech, written by others, may be a necessity on some occasions. If so, learn how to do it properly.

Read through the script enough times to become familiar with the pacing and language. Practice grabbing a phrase or sentence in your head and then look up to deliver it to the audience. Keep eye contact front and center on your to-do list. Sound like you mean what you're saying. If some practice runs through the script don't result in a smooth delivery, find a coach to help you sound polished and authentic, even though you are reading your presentation.

And for pete's sake, if you are using a TelePrompter, PLEASE get some professional training/coaching on how to do it effectively.

While the above tweaks are certainly aspirational skills for every presenter, for an executive presenter, they are simply non-negotiable.

What other executive tweaks have you used/seen used to create a better experience for the audience?